parent tips

Written by: Andrew Biemiller, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

0-6 Months

Talking To And With Infants During The First Year Of Life

Infants need to hear a lot of language during their first year of life.

When this language is directed to the infant, the baby is more likely to attend, and to begin to process speech sounds.

Early "babbling" when infants practice making language sounds occurs only when they have been hearing language. Hearing lots of language and paying attention to the sounds you make as you speak precedes infants' ability to understand words and even more before they begin to produce words.

Hearing language on television or radio does not have the same beneficial effect as a live person talking directly to an infant.

7-12 Months

Responding to Infants Pointing

Children continue to need lots and lots of language experience as above.

Babies and toddlers point. This is an important way of sharing experiences as well as asking for things as well as for the words for names of things.

Participate with toddlers. Look and talk about things they point at.

You can point for them to see things. Label things that children point to.

13-60 Months

Having Conversations With Your Children After 12 Months Of Age

If talking to your child before your child is talking is important, then after 12 months talking with your child who can understand speech and talk some is even more important.

Try to figure out what your child says and means, and say what you think your child is trying to say and mean.

Extending A Child's Language

"Extending language" means turning single words or two words into meaningful sentences. When a child points to a banana and says "...nana", you might say, "Do you want a banana?"

Extensions both help you to check on your understanding of what your child says and provide models for your child's language development.

Children's development of language depends on a lot on your efforts to understand them through extending and repeating what they say (especially 12-36 months)

Guiding Style is Important for Children's Language Development

Language can be used to give orders, to give suggestions, to ask questions, to tell about interesting things, and to describe events or tell or read stories.

In some homes, parents mainly use language with children to give orders. There are times when this is necessary such as, "Don't touch the stove!"

However, in homes where children develop rich language, parents make more use of providing suggestions, asking questions, giving choices, and giving encouragement, not to mention affection!

Responding to Children's Talk and Requests

When children talk or ask questions (even one word questions, like "Wha?" while pointing), it is important to respond fairly quickly and as helpfully as possible.

If a child asks what an object is, tell the child.

If a child asks what a word means (e.g., "What is precious?") explain simply in the current context.

If a child tells about something interesting to him or her, for example "Bird!" by pointing to a bird in the sky, then look and be excited, and talk about the bird. Say, it is a small bird or it is a big bird, or it is a black bird, or it is a crow, etc. You are extending the child's language and vocabulary.

The old saying "children should be seen but not heard" is a terrible recipe resulting in raising children with poor language development!

Showing Warmth of Response

Sometimes, it can be hard to be loving and encouraging all of the time. Parents are human beings too, and they get tired, discouraged, and busy. However, trying to be encouraging and showing warmth when responding to children clearly results in children with richer language and children who ask questions when they need to know about something.

A few "don't bother me" responses may result in children who learn not to ask about the words they don't know.

Teaching and Explaining Words during Story Reading and Conversations

Most children enjoy being read to during the first 5 years of life and even after they start school. In fact, fortunate children continue to be read to well into the elementary school years.

During the second year of life, children particularly like to look at picture books and talk about what is in the pictures. I particularly recommend Richard Scarry's Best Word Book Ever and other "word books" by Scarry.

By 24 months of age or even earlier, children also begin to enjoy narratives but with quite short stories (3-5 pages). Often such books have several stories in one book or repetitive stories such as The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

Children usually want these stories read many times. They may well almost memorize the sequence of the story without necessarily having a complete understanding of the whole story. After the first reading, I recommend explaining the meaning of 1 or 2 words each time you read the book. These explanations should be simply the meaning in the story and not other meanings. Usually, the meaning can be explained in 1 or 2 sentences.

By 36-48 months, children begin to grasp the plot of a story. Appropriate stories become longer, and have more words per page. More words (4 to 6) should now be taught as the story is read a number of times over many days.

There are two kinds of words that are important to teach as stories are read.

There are text critical words which must be understood if the story is to be understood. A good example is circus in Clifford at the Circus.

A second type of words to teach are general vocabulary words, which may not be critical for the story but which can be taught in the context of the story. An example might be prepared when it occurs in a story. These are the words that children with large vocabularies often have while those with small vocabularies often do not. A listing of such words is attached to the Parent/Caregiver Vocabulary Narrative.

Choosing Books to Read

Books read to children should be "interesting" for the child. However, such books can include quite a number of words that may not be known when the child first hears the book. This newness of words provides an opportunity to explain words (a few per each reading).

Recommendations for books to read are provided in the sections on Speech Language Development and Children's Literature

Biemiller, A. (2009). Tips For Parents and Caregivers: Vocabulary Development 0-60 Months. In L.M. Phillips (Ed.), Handbook of language and literacy development: A Roadmap from 0 – 60 Months. [online], pp. 1 - 3. London, ON: Canadian Language and Literacy Research Network. Available at: Handbook of language and literacy development